


tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. these, our bodies, possessed by light. tell me we'll never get used to it.

by vergule



Category: Charmed (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, sue me if this is ooc i just needed some hurt comfort bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:08:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21866491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vergule/pseuds/vergule
Summary: remember when macy threw mel into a wall and the charmed writers made a joke about throwing mel into walls on twitter like it wasn’t violent homophobia? because i do. remember when the s’arcana all died and then jada left the show and fiona became evil? because i try not to.
Relationships: Jada Shields/Mel Vera
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. these, our bodies, possessed by light. tell me we'll never get used to it.

**Author's Note:**

> not canon compliant after like 1x17 or something

Jada gets worried when Mel doesn't come around for a few days. A storm is brewing amidst the s'arcana members, who are anticipating war with the elders. Mel doesn't text, doesn't call, doesn't come by the shop. She decides to take the old-fashioned route to get to Mel's house and drives up in Constance’s car, walks up to the door and knocks. She doesn't know what to expect but it's Mel herself who answers the door, face sunken and devoid of makeup.

"Mel?" Jada questions softly.

Mel is silent for a moment. Jada thinks she wants to say something but doesn't quite know how to say it.

"Want to come for a drive?" she asks gently.

Mel nods, and Jada slowly and steadily walks her to the car, anxiety growing with each passing second though she tries not to let it show on her face.

They drive past Hilltowne and just get on the highway and Jada drives for a while, and Mel stares out the window. They drive past any major city, into the rural greenery of Michigan. At some points, it's a one-lane highway, and at some points, just two. Jada goes a moderate pace. It was only noon when she went by Mel's but it's rounding two pm. There's Kenny Lattimore crooning from the r&b station on the radio and it gets a little staticky but she leaves it be.

They stop at a Waffle House of all places, when they need gas and Jada’s heard Mel’s stomach rumbling loudly for at least half an hour now, and Jada orders waffles for Mel and eggs and hashbrowns for herself. Mel picks at the food and tries to smile at Jada but it comes out as more of a grimace, and Jada can't help it this time when her brows furrow and her lips tighten into a line. She wants to take Mel's temperature and almost reaches for Mel's forehead, which she's sure is unnaturally hot, and then remembers they're in semi-rural Michigan and she can't chance it. She walks up to pay the bill and Mel stares out the window.

They get back on the road and Jada knows Mel probably wants to go farther but they both need to be back in Hilltowne tonight, so she makes for the southbound end of the highway.

"Thank you," Mel says softly, so softly that Jada can barely hear it over the defogger.

"Of course," Jada tries to inject as much sincerity into her tone as she can. "Any time."

She reaches for Mel's hand but Mel draws back and Jada is hurt, she can't deny it but she tries not to take it personally. Mel is clearly going through something, and she's been on the other side of that before. Moving to Hilltowne. It was a dark time.

They're silent again for some time. Jada likes driving, even now, and she prefers not to put the car into cruise control. She prefers to watch the speed on the glowing dashboard on long drives like this. Mel hasn't said much of anything but she looks miles better than she did even an hour ago.

"I think you have some clothes at mine if you want to come around my place." This is the last thing she'll say if Mel doesn't talk.

Mel looks surprised at her own nod. They both know this is a lie and Jada will likely have to orb to get Mel something to wear from the house. It fills Jada with some kind of full feeling despite her latent anxiety.

Jada has sat in silence with Mel for the majority of the day but upon the realization that she doesn't have to go home, Mel looks rejuvenated. It sends pangs of emotion through Jada's heart and she recalls all of the times she was so relieved to have a room on campus so mom wouldn't have to drive her home, how it started to feel at the end when she saw the house at the end of the driveway and they pulled up to it. How she would swallow every time she unbuckled her seatbelt, and tense every time she heard mom or dad's footsteps outside her room, even if they were just a reminder of things she didn't have the energy to deal with.

Jada is the one to surprise both of them this time when she starts talking. She talks about growing up in Detroit and in Ann Arbor, what it's like to be in a big city, the bookstores and cafes she hung out in and the food she ate. How she would always walk into one of the pastry shops in Mexicantown (she doesn't mention being with Dad, doesn't want to go there right now), and buy all the pastries she wanted under the five or ten-dollar limit and she'd tell herself she'd ration them but more likely than not, she'd eat them all when she got home. When she and her friends would walk into pop ups selling food at fifty dollars a plate and order coffee or dessert and take up a table for an hour. Mel starts to smile, and then grin, and then laugh some, but she cuts off abruptly and it sounds kind of pained. They're back in Hilltowne now. Jada realizes with a jolt that Mel looks a little scared again. She drives past the Chinese takeout and pulls up in the driveway.

Mel's stomach is growling. Jada wants to make her one of the pasta dishes Aliya used to make when they were living together, but she just throws some marinara sauce and spaghetti on the stove. She thinks Mel looks like she needs a shower, and she tells Mel she's going to orb to get her some stuff but Mel grabs at her arm and tells her not to leave.

"Can I just, wear something of yours?" Mel asks, voice wavering. Jada pulls out some boxers and a long-sleeved shirt and passes them to Mel without comment. She tries not to be alarmed when Mel leaves what seem to be daggers imbued with runic magic by her bedside, not at the existence of the weapons, but at the realization that Mel had been gripping at them even in the car. She shrugs it off as routine charmed business in the end.

She plates the pasta and realizes she forgot to give Mel a fresh towel, and grabs the blue one from the basket. She opens the door to the bathroom and the towel falls out of her hands to the floor.

Mel goes rigid, and steps away from her, and Jada curses. She picks the towel up. "Um, let me grab you another one." She hurries to the basket and grabs another towel and hands it to Mel wordlessly.

"What happened?" the question slips out but she doesn't take it back.

Mel's back is littered with blue bruising and two of her ribs look painfully cracked. Jada can see now that her slow gait disguised a limp. In the car, she seemed stiff, but Jada had assumed it was psychological. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Why didn't he heal it? Your whitelighter." she probes. She needs to know because her hands are already glowing white with energy, but Mel flinches away when she gets close.

"Mel, please," she intones. "Please let me help."

Jada stands still, absolutely still, and Mel takes one step, then two steps towards her, and then walks into Jada's arms. She's still wet and Jada's clothes are probably a little dirty but neither of them care in that moment. Jada just holds her for long enough that dinner is cold by the time she runs a feather-light hand down Mel's back. She draws large circles over Mel's back, so lightly that she's almost hovering. She doesn't want to press into any of the bruises. She knows it will hurt nonetheless but it will ground Mel in her body and soothe equally. Mel relaxes into her arms with each circle, and Jada allows costive bursts of healing magic to knit its way over Mel's back and feels the bruised and broken vessels and bones fit together piece by piece.

She closes her own eyes and feels in the small of her gut for her healing aura, and draws it out of herself. She steps even closer to Mel, closer than she thinks she's ever been to another human being and draws Mel tightly into herself and then extends the white light in her body out toward Mel as if she intends to draw Mel into her soul. It is painfully intimate and Mel seems to understand that, because tears begin to shed from her eyes and Jada feels the wet drops against her shoulder.

Jada holds Mel firmly, tightly, so tight she knows it has to almost hurt but Mel sighs and Jada feels all the tension leave Mel's body as Mel almost caves into her. She takes the long-forgotten white towel and starts with Mel's face and works her way down to Mel's toes, swiping across Mel's torso with the kind of pressure she thinks Mel will like. Mel stops crying for this, though she's holding her breath. Jada pulls the boxers onto Mel's body, leg-by-leg, and takes her time in slowly supporting Mel's weight as she carries Mel to the bed. Mel buries her face into Jada's neck again, and Jada takes off her wet shirt and puts the clean one she'd given Mel on herself. Mel turns away from her and curls up some, but she keeps drawing light circles across Mel's back.

"It um." Mel clears her throat. "It was Macy," she whispers. Anger creeps up Jada's spine and her hands ball into fists. "She didn't mean to do it, but she threw me into the wall." Mel's eyes are glazed over. She's checked out completely.

Jada swallows down her rage. It's unproductive in this moment, though she allows herself to fantasize for a moment about going to the Vera-Vaughn household and asking Macy what could have possessed her to do this to her own younger sister.

Instead of that, she takes a deep breath and lets out the rage with the exhale. She retrieves some essential oils from the cabinet - the magically infused ones, with lavender and citrus scents, and decides Mel will prefer lavender. She takes a clean mortar and drops in some unscented lotion and mixes it with a few drops.

"This might be a little cold, okay?" Mel nods her assent, still turned away from Jada, and Jada rubs the lotion between her hands and then starts at Mel's shoulders and the nape of her neck. Mel sighs almost immediately as Jada tries to rub away each and every knot and worry that Mel has experienced since she learned she was a Charmed One.

Then, as she works away, Jada sees Mel's body language transform completely. She moves to Mel's upper back, then her lower back, and Mel groans when a few cracks pop her lower back into place when Jada applies light pressure with her elbows. She starts at Mel's fingers, then, stiff from years of writing papers and wearing away her thumbs on a smartphone and focuses on the muscles in her palms, then the joint of her elbow, and back up to her shoulders, rubbing bursts of warm, white healing magic across the tight knots.

Mel sobs openly at times, and when she does, Jada just stops to rub large circles into her back again. The sobs subside and Mel’s body opens up, her hands unclench from the fists they’ve formed almost instinctually, her toes relax, her knees unlock and stretch out onto the white sheets. Jada smiles at that, and she leaves the imprints of butterfly kisses across Mel’s thighs. She rubs them up and down and delights at Mel’s sighs.

Jada presses kisses to Mel’s fingers, then the pads of her palms, her forearms, then her shoulders. She gather’s Mel’s face in her hands and brushes away the latent tears, kisses Mel’s temples, then over Mel’s eyelids, then her sniffling nose, then her mouth. She gathers Mel into her arms. Mel rests in the crook of her shoulder like she’s meant to be there, and Jada can’t help pressing another kiss into her forehead. She rubs her back and Mel looks at her like she’s everything. They drift off like that, locked together like pieces of a puzzle.

* * *

When Jada wakes, Mel is still in her arms but she's facing Jada now and stroking Jada's hair away from her face. Her expression is open and soft, softer than Jada has ever seen on Mels face before.

She gets the feeling that Mel doesn't really know what to say but Mel touches their noses together and stays curled up next to Jada for a really long time and then she presses a kiss to Jada's nose, and then her eyelids, and her cheeks, and her forehead, and her chin, and finally a sweet kiss to her lips. She nuzzles into Jadas cheek again then and Jada laces their fingers together.

She kisses Mel's fingers where they're interlocked with her own, and Mel gives Jada the biggest smile Jada has ever seen on Mel's face. It's peaceful and serene and happy. It's like nothing else exists, not even the s'arcana, not being charmed, not even being witches. Jada thinks it's the happiest she's ever seen Mel, even from before Mel knew she existed. And then Mel is the one to draw their laced fingers up to her lips and she kisses Jada's all of Jada’s fingers and both of Jada’s palms. They stay there forever.

Jada leaves once, to orb to Detroit and she comes back with eclairs from Astorias and conchas from the Mexicantown bakery and they eat the eclairs first and pretend to be French and bougeois and then playfight over everything else, tearing into the pastries ravenously, yesterday’s pasta forgotten on the counter. The bed is sticky by the time they're done making a mess of crumbs but they lick the sticky mess off their fingers and kiss each other, giggling. Mel makes to leave several times but then they have to wash her clothes from yesterday so she stays a little while and they change the sheets together and then mess up Jada's spare set when they have sex, and they're both giddy and giggling the whole time and stop to laugh more than once.

Everything else is closed because it's still early so Jada holds Mel's hand when she walks Mel to her front door and Mel doesn't look scared, not even one bit. Jada stares down the door for a good while. She's still determined to give Macy a piece of her mind but Mel can take care of herself, and she wants to respect Mel's boundaries. Mel stands at the door and tells Jada to stand underneath the step so Mel can be taller when she kisses Jada goodbye and she walks into the house with her back straight, tall and proud.

She blows Jada a kiss and slams the door, then seemingly changes her mind and gives Jada one final kiss on the cheek before she goes inside for good this time. Jada cups her hand to her cheek on the drive home as though she can keep the warmth of Mel's lips right there, and the imprint of them won't fly away if she just thinks about it. She has to finish the laundry when she gets back, then assist some s’arcana missions and probably wash Constance's dishes for stealing her car for way longer than she'd asked for it, and she has couple of tattoo appointments to take care of later on but she smiles like an idiot for the rest of the day and doesn't even mind it when Aliya teases her about it.

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me about uncharacteristic ooc tenderness @lelianasface on tumblr or at @princejaz_ on twitter where i have been trying and failing to understand how stan twitter works


End file.
